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Let every soul recall, then, at the outset the truth that soul
is the author of all living things, that it has breathed the life
into them all, whatever is nourished by earth and sea, all the
creatures of the air, the divine stars in the sky; it is the
maker of the sun; itself formed and ordered this vast heaven and
conducts all that rhythmic motion; and it is a principle distinct
from all these to which it gives law and movement and life, and
it must of necessity be more honourable than they, for they
gather or dissolve as soul brings them life or abandons them, but
soul, since it never can abandon itself, is of eternal being.
How life was purveyed to the universe of things and to the
separate beings in it may be thus conceived:
That great soul must stand pictured before another soul, one not
mean, a soul that has become worthy to look, emancipate from the
lure, from all that binds its fellows in bewitchment, holding
itself in quietude. Let not merely the enveloping body be at
peace, body's turmoil stilled, but all that lies around, earth at
peace, and sea at peace, and air and the very heavens. Into that
heaven, all at rest, let the great soul be conceived to roll
inward at every point, penetrating, permeating, from all sides
pouring in its light. As the rays of the sun throwing their
brilliance upon a lowering cloud make it gleam all gold, so the
soul entering the material expanse of the heavens has given life,
has given immortality: what was abject it has lifted up; and the
heavenly system, moved now in endless motion by the soul that
leads it in wisdom, has become a living and a blessed thing; the
soul domiciled within, it takes worth where, before the soul, it
was stark body- clay and water- or, rather, the blankness of
Matter, the absence of Being, and, as an author says, "the
execration of the Gods."
The Soul's nature and power will be brought out more clearly,
more brilliantly, if we consider next how it envelops the
heavenly system and guides all to its purposes: for it has
bestowed itself upon all that huge expanse so that every
interval, small and great alike, all has been ensouled.
The material body is made up of parts, each holding its own
place, some in mutual opposition and others variously
interdependent; the soul is in no such condition; it is not
whittled down so that life tells of a part of the soul and
springs where some such separate portion impinges; each separate
life lives by the soul entire, omnipresent in the likeness of the
engendering father, entire in unity and entire in diffused
variety. By the power of the soul the manifold and diverse
heavenly system is a unit: through soul this universe is a God:
and the sun is a God because it is ensouled; so too the stars:
and whatsoever we ourselves may be, it is all in virtue of soul;
for "dead is viler than dung."
This, by which the gods are divine, must be the oldest God of
them all: and our own soul is of that same Ideal nature, so that
to consider it, purified, freed from all accruement, is to
recognise in ourselves that same value which we have found soul
to be, honourable above all that is bodily. For what is body but
earth, and, taking fire itself, what [but soul] is its burning
power? So it is with all the compounds of earth and fire, even
with water and air added to them?
If, then, it is the presence of soul that brings worth, how can a
man slight himself and run after other things? You honour the
Soul elsewhere; honour then yourself.
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